The Emperor and Empress’s devotion to each other was known to everyone in Yunjing. That itself was a fine thing — only the Empress’s continued inability to conceive was a cause for regret.

In the past it had been said they would revisit the matter after two years. Yet when the two years arrived, Li Gu did not raise it, and Xie Yuzhang did not raise it either — the two of them appeared to have forgotten it entirely.

But ever since the Emperor’s marriage, no new imperial heirs had been born in the rear palace at all, and the situation had grown genuinely strange. By the ninth month, an official at last presented a memorial urging the Emperor to expand the rear palace and continue the imperial line.

Li Gu picked up his vermilion brush and wrote his reply on the memorial: “We have three sons. The succession is secured. What business is the rear palace of yours? Mind your own household affairs!”

This Emperor was known for saying very little — he was reputed to value words like gold. And yet when he put brush to paper, he was a different creature entirely. The official who received the memorial back stared at it with his mouth hanging open. The wording and tone were such that it set one’s mind reeling in confusion.

The Emperor was thoroughly unyielding, and he did indeed have three sons who appeared healthy for the time being. The officials pinched their noses shut and said nothing more.

Li Gu summoned the imperial physicians for consultation. Each one of them swore up and down: “Her Majesty the Empress’s health is sound and robust in every regard.”

Despite saying so, they still prescribed a great many warming and nourishing medicines for Xie Yuzhang.

The physicians prescribed them, and Xie Yuzhang drank them.

Every time Li Gu returned to Danyang Palace, all the various tonic concoctions had already been cleared away so he would not see them; the lingering air of the room was always sweetly perfumed, yet invariably carried a faint, undeniable undertone of medicinal herbs. Xie Yuzhang’s appetite had also noticeably decreased, and this caused Li Gu a quiet, gnawing unease.

One day after returning from court, Li Gu was struck by a sudden impulse. He turned and went directly back to Danyang Palace, giving no notice to the palace attendants — and sure enough, he walked in on Xie Yuzhang in the midst of drinking her medicine.

From beyond the partition screen, he heard her retch several times. A handmaid said with distress in her voice, “Your Majesty, let us stop for today.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “Enough of that. Where is the third bowl? Bring it to me.” She had barely finished speaking when her stomach surged again and she retched several more times.

“Your Majesty,” the handmaid said, her words carrying that note of pain.

This handmaid had entered Xie Yuzhang’s tent at age eight, when they were still on the steppe, and had grown up in Xie Yuzhang’s service, eventually becoming one of her most trusted and loyal attendants.

Xie Yuzhang wiped her mouth. “It’s nothing but a few bowls of medicine. Look at you.”

The handmaid said, “At the very least, please let His Majesty know of the hardship you endure.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “And what good would that do? To use this to win his pity and his favor? Ridiculous. This is my own choice.”

She said, “Don’t cry. His goodness to me requires none of these things to make a claim on it. He rejected petitions to hold a consort selection on my behalf — all I am doing is drinking a few bowls of medicine. What is there to weep over?”

The handmaid said, sniffling, “His Majesty and Her Majesty love each other deeply — is that not simply as it should be?”

Xie Yuzhang seemed surprised. “Since when did you become so naive?”

She said, “Nothing in this world is simply as it should be. Every good thing received requires an equal value to be given in return. What you say so simply, so lightly — ‘simply as it should be’ — why not think about why Yue Xiang insisted on a separation from Li Yong.”

The handmaid clicked her tongue. “Li Yong is only of the Fifth Rank, and yet he had his heart set on taking concubines! If it were me, I’d want a separation too!”

“Indeed — Li Yong is only of the Fifth Rank, and he didn’t dare act on it because Yue Xiang made such a fuss. Yet my husband is the Emperor. What is there that he does not dare? Every fine woman in this realm is his for the taking. Just think of the imperial hunt this summer — in the temporary palace, was there not a very clear division of who was housed where? How was it that the young women of the Xue and Ma families just happened to ‘stray’ into our area? Those young women of fifteen or sixteen — even I, seeing them, wanted to marvel at their youth and beauty. Were his eyes blind, that he could not see them?”

“Nothing in a person is harder to master than desire. People are tangled in desire from the very moment they are born — even as small children they compete for their parents’ love. As they grow, they compete for wealth and power. Men compete for women; women compete for favor. And an Emperor? He is the one who stands at the very peak of all that power. Anything he wants, any woman he wants — it comes to him easily. He need not even seek it; others will bring it to him.”

“If you were in his position, could you refuse all of it as a matter of course?”

The handmaid was silenced.

Li Gu stood beyond the partition screen, listening to his wife say: “What you take for granted is precisely that about my husband which is rare and remarkable — exactly that which most men in this world are incapable of doing. If you stood in my place, you would understand how worthy of cherishing it truly is.”

“Enough. Bring me the medicine. Don’t let it go cold.”

My husband…

Li Gu stood outside the door. He could not say why, but his eyes began to sting.

His hand nearly reached all the way to the partition screen on one occasion — nearly pushed it open to rush in and stop her from drinking that foul-tasting medicine, from enduring this suffering. But reason held him back.

He had been reading history lately. Empresses without sons who managed to live out their final years in peace were not absent from the record — but every one of them had been a woman of wisdom and resolution, every one of them had survived a bitter and relentless struggle before she could secure her own position after becoming an Empress Dowager.

He did not want that kind of hardship for her.

He also longed to have a child that was theirs together.

In the end, Li Gu did not go in. He withdrew in silence and told the palace attendants, “Not a word to her that I came.”

The palace attendants prostrated themselves in fear, not daring to make a sound.

Li Gu slipped away quietly. That evening, when he returned to Danyang Palace, the room was fragrant with incense, and Xie Yuzhang greeted him with a radiant smile.

Li Gu touched her face, thinking to himself — she has grown thinner.

Xie Yuzhang was already slender and graceful by nature; now she had taken on an air of gentle frailty that inspired a protective tenderness. Yet she said not one word about it, and spoke to him in soft, small fragments — small enough to make him feel that her day had been yet another peaceful and contented one.

Hold on just a little longer. Once there’s a child, it will be all right, he thought.

In the night, Xie Yuzhang woke.

Li Gu’s embrace was always warm — a good thing that it was now winter; in summer she would need several basins of ice in the room just to keep from being overheated by him.

Li Gu lay with his eyes open, gently stroking her wrist.

“What is it?” she asked drowsily, turning to face him. The middle of the night gave her voice a soft, husky edge.

“You’ve grown thinner,” Li Gu said.

Xie Yuzhang said, “I was never plump to begin with.” She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep.

Then there was a sudden warmth at her wrist, soft and gently heated. She opened her eyes, and saw the man carefully pressing his lips to that slender, pale wrist. The tip of his tongue traced over the faint ridge of a vein — a tingling sensation that traveled all the way inward.

Xie Yuzhang smiled and let him.

His lips drew closer, and found hers.

In the winter night, the two of them did not make love. They simply lay together, holding each other, lips softly meeting, warmly touching. Speaking in low murmurs, sharing words from the heart.

Long skies and enduring earth. Day after day, evening after evening.

Only in this moment. Only right now.

Into the spring of the tenth year of the Kaiyuan reign period, Xie Yuzhang still showed not the faintest sign of pregnancy.

The imperial physicians still gave the same responses as always — the Empress’s health was sound and robust — though they hinted that conception could be something of a mystery, and perhaps Her Majesty might consider visiting a temple to pray.

Li Gu had never believed in spirits or deities in all his life. He had several of the imperial physicians dragged away and given twenty strokes of the rod each.

He thought on it for a long while, then found a moment to quietly ask one of Xie Yuzhang’s most trusted handmaids: “Who used to take her pulse before?”

The handmaid said, “Right up until she entered the palace, it was always Physician Bao who attended to everyone in our household.”

Li Gu asked, “Who is he? One of the imperial physicians?”

The handmaid said, “His name is Bao Zhongjin. He was an imperial physician of the former Zhao. He accompanied Her Majesty when she was sent to marry into Mobei. After she returned, Her Majesty provided him the funds to open a medical clinic. Our Princess’s Residence always went to him and no one else — Her Majesty trusts him completely.”

Bao Zhongjin was brought to the palace that very night.

He had been away from the imperial palace for many years. Being hauled in by force in the middle of the night could only be on account of one person. When he was brought before Li Gu, he showed no surprise whatsoever. He immediately dropped to his knees and bowed his head to the ground. “This commoner Bao Zhongjin pays his respects to Your Majesty.”

One look and it was plain he was a man who understood the situation clearly.

Li Gu asked him directly: “You were the one who took the Empress’s pulse all along. Tell me — is there something wrong with her constitution that has prevented her from conceiving?”

“In reply to Your Majesty, Her Majesty is vigorous in her movement and has practiced riding and archery throughout her life — her health is most robust,” Bao Zhongjin said. “Only…”

Li Gu asked, “Only what?”

Bao Zhongjin lowered his head and said, “In those years in Mobei, Her Majesty took a contraceptive decoction without interruption in order not to conceive any children there. As all medicines carry some risk, I did counsel Her Majesty that this might make conception more difficult in the future. But Her Majesty’s resolve was firm, and she would not hear of stopping while in Mobei. And at the time, we could not afford to think of ‘the future.’ Therefore, this commoner’s conjecture is that Her Majesty’s continued inability to conceive is, in all likelihood, due to this cause.”

Li Gu said, “Countless women throughout the land use such contraceptive decoctions, and they can conceive the moment they stop. I have never heard of anyone suffering lasting infertility because of it.”

“Because — because…” Fine beads of sweat had begun to appear on Bao Zhongjin’s brow. He knew that what he was about to say might well enrage the Emperor. Yet if he did not say it, the Emperor might not believe him, which could also provoke his fury. The physicians’ world had its own circle of knowledge: word had already spread through all the physicians of the capital that several imperial physicians had recently been flogged.

Li Gu said, “Speak.”

“Because Her Majesty, the amount she used was truly…” Bao Zhongjin prostrated himself fully, his forehead touching the backs of his own hands, unable to look at the Emperor. “…too much.”

A dead silence fell over the hall. The crackle and spit of the candles burning could be heard with perfect clarity.

Hu Jin’s head was drenched in sweat. He wished he could reach into his own ears and dig those three words out, keep them from ever entering his mind.

Too much.

All three men in that hall understood what it meant.

Because the contraceptive decoction was something taken after the act of intercourse had occurred.

Xie Yuzhang was now in the full flower of her years. Li Gu still desired her constantly and could not see past her to any other woman.

When she had married into Ashina Wuwei’s household, she had been only seventeen, in the full bloom of youth and beauty — a rare beauty of the mortal world, capable of toppling kingdoms.

Any man who had her would surely have wanted to crush her, to dissolve her, to be one with her forever. He would never, ever have felt that it was “too much.”

From the Emperor, a violent and savage energy rose abruptly.

Hu Jin’s hand instinctively closed around the hilt of his sword.

Li Gu at this moment felt a furious, wrathful storm surging and howling through his body. He wanted to seize the sword and hack the man before him — the one who had dared to speak those three words aloud — into pieces and feed him to the dogs.

He sent a kick into Bao Zhongjin. “Get out!”

The words were saturated with savage fury.

Hu Jin stepped forward, grabbed Bao Zhongjin by the collar, and hauled him out. He took the opportunity to retreat outside as well.

Bao Zhongjin wiped cold sweat from his face, opened his mouth to speak. Hu Jin immediately pressed a hand over his mouth, signaling him to make no sound. Bao Zhongjin dared not move.

The night was still for several breaths — then from within the hall came a tremendous, thundering crash!

Bao Zhongjin’s face went pale. Hu Jin let out a long sigh.

“Hu Jin!” Li Gu’s voice came from inside, raging with fury.

Hu Jin left Bao Zhongjin where he stood and strode quickly back inside.

The door was left barely ajar. Bao Zhongjin heard the Emperor say, “Send word to Seventh Brother.”

“Tell him to dig up Ashina Wuwei’s grave for me!”

“Ashina Wuwei — I want him ground to ash and scattered to the winds!”